


doubled over & i hit the ground

by uniformly (scramjets)



Category: Mr. Robot (TV), The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety Attacks, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Drug Use, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-28 21:21:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5106182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scramjets/pseuds/uniformly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eugene Sledge moves in next door.</p>
            </blockquote>





	doubled over & i hit the ground

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, I just wanted to see them meet. Title from _The John Wayne_ by _Little Green Cars_.

*

Something scrapes against the wall.

Elliot shifts on his bed, sheets bunching as he leans across for a cigarette. He knocks off half the junk on the side table before he manages to find one and settles back as he lights it; a snap of flame and the following draw, the nicotine making his head rush for a pleasant second. He lays back and opens his mouth to let the smoke curl out.

Another drag, a thump.

A detached part of Elliot finds the losing battle funny and he has to smile when next door tries again, the feet of some bulky piece of furniture pulled across the paneled floors until the person gives up completely and lets it drop with a sudden bang.

The silence sits like it has no idea what to do, until Mrs. McCarthy makes an executive decision, thumping up the stairs with her cane half a step ahead. Her words precede her: the heavy weighted _goddamn_ , the punchy _a_ ’s coming from high in the mouth, separate until they’re packed together with another arrangement of letters. She’s old, that McCarthy. Moved in with the apartment block and is probably going to leave in a body bag at the ripe old age of 200.

McCarthy raps on the opposite door and it opens, hinges squealing.

Elliot finishes off his cigarette as McCarthy rains abuse on the new neighbour. The guy doesn’t even get a word in, _ma’am_ s and _please_ s, and _excuse me_ s shoved aside like day old garbage.

“You’re gonna come downstairs and clean the mess you made. There’s dust everywhere, boy. You listenin'. _Everywhere_.”

“I—“

Elliot imagines her shoving the point of a gnarled finger into the guy’s chest, her rings loaded enough to qualify as knuckle dusters.

“No respect,” she says, then sniffs, suddenly haughty. “Kids these days.”

There’s a scuffle as she turns, elbows and her cane knocking into the wall just as loud as next door had been, then: “Well?”

The guy says, “Just a second,” and McCarthy says, “Good,” before she stamps down the hall, her unsteady, heavy gait audible all the way down the stairs. There’s another squeal of hinges, followed by the soft pad of another person.

Elliot grinds the filter into a dish he keeps on the table, ash smeared black on the ceramic. He cleans it with a tissue sometimes, it’s too much work to wash it when it’s just an ashtray.

-

A knock on the door jolts the blur of code back into structured lines instead of aimless black motes.

Elliot stares, confused, until there’s another knock. It comes as two restrained beats, like whoever’s on the other side is sorry to intrude.

The bulk of Elliot ignores it, but the fundamental part of him is curious, so he pushes off his chair and fumbles in the dark of his apartment to the door.

Elliot squints in the warmer spill of the hallway light, then has to press his eyes shut for a second against the glossy red-orange of the guy’s hair.

His head aches, and the realisation sends a cascade of body complaints into awareness: the cramping of his stomach, the pressure in his bladder; the blocky ache at the base of his neck, muscles tight, pain marching down the curve of his spine until it disappears in a frothiness of pins and needles where Elliot realises that his ass is actually numb.

Elliot clears his throat but his voice is still sandpapery when he asks, “What time is it?”

The guy gives him an odd look, but he turns his wrist, holds up the cuff of his sleeve with two fingers like he’s feeling his pulse. “Nearly 9,” he says.

Elliot focuses on the dint in the skirting board, paint flaking off where the wood has been chipped in. The carpet frays there, too.

“What day is it?” Elliot says.

“Sunday.”

“Shit.”

There’s a pause, and Elliot’s already forgotten that the guy’s still standing there until he says, “I need help with shifting something, I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind... I could,” he stops. “Get you a crate of beer or—,” the words slow down, “or whatever.”

Elliot transfers his attention from the skirting to the guy. The red of his hair hurts less this time, but to stare at it amplifies the ache in his head, so Elliot slides his attention to his face, where his features are long and narrow, and sit stiffly like he’s pinned something back. Elliot tracks down the white collared shirt, to the pressed pants that end in bare feet and back up again. The guy shifts, the barest suggestion of colour rising on his cheeks.

“I’m busy.” The words slide out of Elliot’s mouth.

There’s a flicker on the guy’s face, a narrowing and shifting that’s too fast to read, then he nods, says, “Thanks anyway.” He waits a beat longer before he turns for the open door of his apartment.

Elliot angles his head to see inside, catches more long neat lines and the corner of a heavy looking table, before the door shuts, silent this time.

-

Elliot occasionally receives incorrect mail. More often, it’s for the next box. Once, it was for the box with numbers switched round.

The envelope is thick and Elliot brings it up to his nose to inhale the smell of paper. The darker, heavy smell of black ink skirts beneath it, and there’s a flash of something: worn knees on faded overalls, the plastic box of a CRT monitor and its flickering screen; the clutter of spare parts with coloured insulated wire tossed on top. It’s gone before Elliot can fully unfold it, and he chases the smell of ink for another one of those saturated memories.

Nothing eventuates, and so he slots the letter in the correct box.

-

Eugene Sledge.

He had read it off the envelope.

Elliot estimates the value of it before he sets his hands on his keyboard and hacks him. It’s a little thrill, to bypass conversation that would, given time, eventually hand him the same information. Even considering these hypotheticals, the back-and-forth of _how’s it going_ and _yeah, pretty good_ ; they make Elliot’s skin crawl, something thick and oily in its insincerity that he wants to sink his fingers into and smudge out.

He licks his teeth and hits enter.

The results give him a pause once he shakes off the metadata and cached files, all the extra bits of data that obscures the basis of Eugene Sledge.

Elliot clicks and reads systemically – files it all away and then sits back, the spine of the chair hard and biting. He could search again, but that suggests there’s a flaw in his process. Instead, he flicks his attention to his hands poised over the keyboard, letters on the keys chipped from use.

There’s not much on Sledge. His digital presence lacks, considering his age. Elliot tugs at the memories of his own childhood. There’s the hazy recollection of having to pluck the number seven several times for the correct letter on his old brick cellphone, and the smug excitement in tricking java code into letting him right-click where he’s not supposed to on a website. He remembers Snake, the tail of pixels longer and longer onscreen until all there is, is a blocky spiral.

Elliot sits up in his chair, eyes hazy on the screen that reflects white back. He plays with his lip, picks at the flaking skin and tastes blood, so he grabs his soft pack and lights one up, blotting the unpleasant metal tang away with something more distasteful.

He’s annoyed, Elliot realises. He hasn’t been engaged with himself enough to feel it before, this spike in internal processing in response to external stimuli. He exhales, feels the burn of smoke through his sinuses and idly compares it to the low hum of computer fans when too many processes have kicked up.

Sledge has a Facebook account with less than a dozen personal entries. He’s tagged into things by a Sidney Phillips, and then from 2010, a Bill Leyden. There’s a handful of photos where Sledge hangs back, but he has his arm slung around a skinny blond man in one, and they’re both in uni—

Shit. They’re both in uniform.

Elliot quickly finishes his cigarette and turns off his computer.

-

His response to the grind of mortar and pestle is Pavlovian; it relaxes him. His muscles loosen in preparation and his breath comes long and slow until he leans forward, steadies, and inhales twice, whip-quick. Elliot exhales, feels the morphine blister through his system as he sinks back into the couch. Everything bleeds away after that. It’s the closest facsimile to contentment he's allowed.

Elliot wiggles his toes, still in socks. The material is thick, and the elastic cuts tight against his ankle. He’ll have to remove them before he sleeps.

The thump crashes through his high – makes his heart leap to his throat though, externally, his reaction is little more than his fingers twitching against his knees. There’s another, smaller thud and it makes Elliot’s thoughts slide sideways to when Sledge moved in next door a month ago.

There’s nothing for a long while, until the muted groan of floorboards drift into Elliot’s limited awareness. It gives him something to focus on, and the image slots neatly in place – the bright red-orange of Sledge’s hair, the neat fold of his shirt sleeves rolled up; his bare white feet peeking from beneath the black of his slacks. He looks like that every time Elliot sees him.

Elliot heaves himself off the couch, floor at a 45 degree angle under him. He rubs his face, scrubs the blunt of his nails through the shaved parts of his hair before he stumbles to the door and into the hallway. The light had busted the week prior, but building maintenance has sorted it out since. It’s too bright, makes Elliot flinch as it sends a wave of pinpricks through his eyes to his brain. The squeak of floorboards are louder in the hall, but there’s a pause now that Elliot’s standing outside Sledge’s apartment.

Shit.

Elliot distinctly aware that he’s thinking this, own voice loud in his head.

What is he doing.

The circling of Elliot’s awareness snaps to an abrupt focus, the kind where everything’s outlined in thick bold black.

His very own file system error.

The door opens before he can decide how to respond, and his heart skips a beat, then thumps hard against his ribcage on the next. It’s like one of those dreams, where he goes to work and is shoved before his co-workers and told to make a presentation.

“Sorry,” Sledge says, finally. Low. “I dropped—“ he stops.

“I got something,” Elliot starts, words a messy slur.

The look Sledge gives him is sharp for all the purple that has collected beneath his eyes. He shakes his head.

Elliot rolls his lower lip between his teeth, scrapes along the spot he’s bitten raw. The lump hurts, the torn skin stings in a way that’s both sharp and tender, and it tethers him to the moment. His fingers press against his thigh – ctrl alt del – and Elliot nods, a jerky up-and-down.

“Well, okay,” he says, for lack of anything.

“Thanks,” Sledge says, his accent round and lilted, soft in the painful throw of too-cool LED light.

And he shuts his door before Elliot can unhinge his jaw and ask, “For what?”

-

Someone knocks on his door. Elliot pulls his lanyard from where it hangs around his neck, the long strap coiling against itself as he sets it down on what barely passes as a kitchen table. He feels unsteady and wrong-footed, like when the toe of his shoe hits a crack in the sidewalk.

His hands might be shaking and he runs it through his hair out of habit, chasing the vague sense memory from when he was younger after receiving a scolding for looking untidy. The knock comes again, bumps through his brain like a pair of rocks in the cavity of his skull. Elliot closes his eyes.

Breathe in.

Krista has never touched him in their sessions, but she had swayed forward once, when she had initially explained the concept of relaxation exercises as if Elliot had never heard one before; her hand prepared to extend before she aborted and sat back.

Hold for four.

And breathe out.

Repeat.

Elliot opens his mouth, shuts it. He opens his hands and closes them up tight.

His sessions with Krista leave him raw. He steels against them and hands nothing over, but he had always needed time to regroup, to sit back and find what hurts had been exposed in the hour and begin the process of patching them back up.

What’s he at now? Then thinks: V.0.9.263.4

There’s a shift from behind the door, the heavy weight of a person and Elliot hesitates before he crosses the room. Sledge’s back is presented to him, shoulders broader than Elliot expects in crisp white, and straight where Elliot slouches, his own shoulders up in defense.

Sledge turns, tired looking, as always; pale, as always, except for his hair, bright in the world of ones and zeros Elliot lives in.

“I never introduced myself,” Sledge says, after a moment.

Elliot wishes for a cigarette, doesn’t know what to do with his hands other than to trace the sharp edges of the door frame as he leans against it.

“Eugene Sledge,” Elliot says and shrugs when Sledge is silent. “It’s on your mail.”

Sledge’s mouth opens and presses shut again before he asks, “Yes. And you?”

“Elliot,” he glances aside to hook the tip of his finger into the empty lock socket of the door frame. The wood inside is rough and flakes on his skin. Elliot chances another look to Sledge and says, “Alderson.”

-

That night, Elliot packs himself into the wedge of space between a set of drawers and the corner. He can barely manage it, can’t even fully relax his shoulders being boxed in like this, but he doesn’t want to; he wants them hunched, arms wound around his knees as he brackets himself in.

Here it comes now.

The rapid in-and-out of his breath, a step off hyperventilating – he has to swallow, saliva collecting in his mouth, pooling on his tongue as his eyes prick, hot and swimming until he screws them shut to rein it in, body heaving with the agony of it.

Here it comes now.

A system reboot, every single part of him overloaded; his head rings with loops of Krista talking, the low, pleasant hum over her voice overlaid by what Elliot knows of her; all those messy complicated pieces that sit behind the barely cobbled together pretense of a functioning human being. And she wants to help him.

It’s in his mouth, papery and dry from his last cigarette. It’s in the cramp of his stomach, how it folds over itself, knotted with anxiety that fights to crawl out through his throat. Maybe if he just spews it out, if he can get all this ugliness out of him; if he jams his fingers in, scrape his nails at the back of his throat– he can do it, he’s done it before, head deep in the toilet bowl, strings of spit meeting the water at the bottom.

Something low and animal vibrates from his chest, before the sound splinters apart, wet and messy – Jesus Christ, just put him out of his misery.

His chest stutters with his breathing, gasping draws of air and he presses his hands to his face, flat at first until he digs his fingers in, then his nails, and then he drags; rakes down his face and then bunches his fists in his hair, rocking forward.

Jesus Christ just put him out of his misery.

Just put him out of his misery.

Jesus Christ.

-

Sledge says, “Hi, Elliot,” one morning, and Elliot doesn’t think he’s talking to him, eyes pinned to some point across the hall before the words register.

So Elliot slinks past next time, as if pleasantries were something physical to avoid, but Sledge continues to greet him, until he wrangles a, ‘hey’, one afternoon. They both stop and regard each other, unsure of what to make of the circumstances until Sledge huffs something of a laugh and shakes his head.

“Hey,” Sledge says, and he smiles for a reason Elliot can’t work out and then disappears down the hallway.

Elliot listens to Sledge’s measured pace down the stairs. He’s seen him do it enough to know that Sledge has a hand against the rail and that he draws it away before moving off the final step.

-

There’s a tap on his door. Twice, like a stutter in a heartbeat. Sheer miracle Elliot hears it over the hum of his computers. He turns, glances to the foot of the door where the light bleeding in is broken into three pieces. The shadows shift and start to draw away, and Elliot vaults out of his chair fast enough that the feet squeal on the floor.

Sledge stands saturated beneath the hallway light, eyes wide when he says, “You’re awake.”

Elliot’s not quite sure how to respond, so he agrees. “I’m awake.”

Sledge ducks his head and Elliot squints at the burn of his hair.

“Can I come in?” Sledge asks, finally.

Elliot’s been on his computer since he returned from work – his eyes are dry, lids closing over them in tired, heavy blinks. He’s aware that his mouth is slack, that the expression makes him look vacant. Someone had told him that once, paired with a scuff on the back of his head.

He shrugs. “Sure,” and steps back.

The apartment doesn’t offer much: the table, the bed, the bathroom door that’s still propped open, humidity leaking out, water puddling noticeably on the tile.

Elliot watches the back of Sledge’s head as he takes it all in, maybe disorientated at the mirrored reflection of his own apartment. Eventually, he sits at the table, perched on the edge of the hard wooden chair before he sags against the back of it, head tilted back. It bares his throat and Elliot watches as Sledge swallows twice, then he traces the shadowed contour of his Adam’s apple up to the point of Sledge’s chin, then to his mouth, everything blue-pink in the off-light.

Elliot cuts his attention away, and then moves back to his computer.

-

Sledge shifts to the squashy couch at some point and falls asleep, arms crossed over his chest and head rested against the cushion, exposing his face. Elliot forgets that he’s there until he catches the glint of Sledge’s hair, dull in the filmy grey of dawn. It gives him a pause, a moment where he studies the slight curve of Sledge’s cheeks and how his lashes rest against them.

Elliot hobbles to the kitchenette, everything stiff and sore; pain shooting up and down his legs, feet partially numb, except for his heels for whatever reason. He fills the water reservoir of his coffee machine, presses the start button and maps out his day as he waits.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr!](http://scramjets.tumblr.com)


End file.
